Sunday, 24 November 2013

I can still
remember when I first heard the most wonderful, the most beautiful, intricate
and impressive musical Amen of my life. I was in the Sheldonian Theatre and had
sitting on endured the nastily uncomfortable wooden bench for the last few
hours so that I could hear Handel’s Messiah performed.

If you’re a
fan of Handel, you’ll know that The Messiah goes out with a musical bang, a
grand choral ‘Worthy is the Lamb’ followed by the boldest and longest Amen,
which crashes and soars over the audience like a blessing (you can listen here)

You might
also know that Handel structured the Messiah to reflect the church’s liturgical
year, starting with the call to ‘comfort ye my people’ with the Advent promise
of the coming King, and telling the story of Jesus from the manger to the cross
to the empty tomb and return to the havens from which he came.

And then, at
the end, the great Amen, the bold assertion that the same Jesus who lived and
died and was raised from death is worthy of all the glory of heaven, worthy of
the very best praise that humans can offer. It is a stirring piece of music,
and maybe if you are observing Stir Up Sunday in your household, you might like
to listen to a bit of this great Amen as you make your Christmas pud.

So we come
today to celebrate the feast of Christ the King, the great Amen at the end of
the church year. The feast of Christ the King wasn’t around while Handel was
writing The Messiah –it wasn’t instituted until much later, in fact until 184
years later, in 1925.

But just
like grand oratorios should end on a note of joyful triumph, so it is right
that church years should go out on a high.
As we affirm in our worship this morning, Jesus is King – the full
wording of the name of this festival is ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ King of the
Universe.’ We hear something of the universal kingship of Jesus in our reading
from the letter to the Colossians.

Jesus, we
hear in this reading which is most likely to be a hymn sung in the early church,
is the firstborn of all creation, the one to whom all kings and rulers owe
their existence and in whom the very universe itself is held together. It’s a big, bold vision of Christ we get in
this reading from Colossians, as big as the universe itself and bigger still.

However
grand we think the universe is – however vast the span of the infinity of space
is – Jesus is grander, because Jesus is the creator and sustainer of this
complex and vast and wonderful cosmos. Jesus
is not just King of the Jews, or King of Israel, or King of the church – he is
king of the entire cosmos. I can’t think of any greater liturgical bang to go
out with at the end of our church year.

It’d be so
tempting to stop there, to revel in the wonder and awe of that vision of Christ
as the universal king.

And yet,
there is another side to the story of Christ the king which Colossians also
tells, a story which we know well because we tell it every Good Friday and
every Sunday as we share bread and wine together, and that is the story which
our Gospel reading for today focuses on, the story of the blood of his cross.
Tom Wright, the former bishop of Durham who is now Professor of New Testament
and Early Christianity, isn’t a big fan of ending the church year with the
Feast of Christ the King.

He believes
that the true place for the Feast of Christ the King in the church’s year is on
Ascension Day when Jesus goes to be with the Father in heaven to take up his
heavenly reign. I see the good bishop’s point. But, the problem is that this
isn’t how the Bible tells it. In the New Testament narratives it is not at the
point that Jesus ascends into heaven that he is revealed as the king of all –
it is on the cross. The criminal
hanging next to Jesus gets it – Jesus, remember me when you come into your
kingdom, in other words when you are anointed King. And Jesus’ answer: I tell
you, today you will be with me in paradise. Today. One small point, but an
interesting one: the word paradise is hardly used in the Bible. It’s only used
twice in the whole New Testament, here in Luke and in Revelation when it talks
about the paradise of God. The word paradise comes from a Persian word, pardes,
meaning ‘royal park’.

Jesus says to the
criminal, today you and I will walk in the grounds of my royal palace. Today I am
made king, today I am crowned, today I am anointed. My disciples can’t see this
yet. They see me having a ring of thorns thrust on my head and being given
vinegar to drink. They are
bowed down with sorrow and confusion and loss. They will see it soon, in just
such a little time when life bursts forth and conquers death. But it’s no less
true because it’s not yet seen. Today I am made king, just as the sign above my
head says.

So with all
due respect to Tom Wright, I’d like to suggest that the true feast of Christ
the King is Good Friday, and is every time we gather together to remember that
gruesomest of all coronations, the blood of his cross. And celebrating Jesus as
our King is, I think, the best way of bringing together the mystery at the
heart of our faith and ending our year on the highest note possible. Because the
mysteryat the very heart of our faith is
that Jesus is most glorious just at the very point that he is humblest, at the
most painful, tortured, God-forsaken moment of Jesus’ life. That is when he is
made king; the long-awaited king promised by the prophet as we heard this
morning.

And in some universe-altering
way, by the laying down of his life for the redemption of all out of love for
all, the glory and the pain cohere as one as Jesus breathes out his final words
‘It is finished.’

The justice and
righteousness which Jeremiah foresaw in the great coming king were not made
known in a grand ceremony but on a criminal’s cross.

Now I have
given you a little picture to look at in your service sheets – this is picture
of a wood carving by the controversial early twentieth century sculptor Eric
Gill (here) and it’s called ‘Christ Crowned.’ It’s from a series of illustrations of
the Gospels, one of which has a much more realistic, pained and dehydrated
Christ on a cross. But the
reason I like this picture of Christ crowned is because it gives a different
view of what was happening on the cross, a view steeped in biblical imagery and
theology. In this picture, the cross is not bare wood but is springing with
life and growth – the cross becomes the tree of life – and Jesus looks at it, a
smile playing on his lips. There are no
anguished women at the feet of this cross but rather, the people gathered
around wearing pre-Raphaelite robes are as relaxed and congenial as if they
were at a party. Over the archway at the side of the cross is the word ‘pax’:
peace. This Jesus on the cross is a Jesus at peace, in a place of peace. This
is the king at home in his kingdom.

So on this
Feast of Christ the King, I’d like to say to you that Christ the King sets a
pattern for our lives as people of the King. It’s easy to think of glorious
things and terrible things as opposites; it’s understandable that we feel that
the most wonderful times in our lives are the easiest, and the most meaningless
times are the most difficult.

But that’s
not what the blood of his cross teaches us. Jesus’ death, his coronation as
king of the universe, whispers to us that it is just at the very hardest times
and the most painful times – the times when we feel that God has utterly
forsaken us – that are the times when the most glorious work of God is being
done in our lives. We may not
see it yet, just like Jesus’ disciples didn't see it while Jesus was hanging on
the cross – but it is no less true. On this Feast of Christ the King, may
the crosses we bear be ones that, like Eric Gill’s image of Christ Crowned,
burst with life and become for us true places of peace, peace that the world
cannot give, peace beyond all understanding. Amen.

Friday, 15 November 2013

Someone shared this quotation with me a while ago. Quotations are all around us, more now than ever, it seems. On mugs, teatowels, printed and arranged on artistic faux-wooden plaques to hang on the wall, and, of course, on the walls of Facebook. Even today I have probably scrolled past half a dozen or so quotations. Quotations are everywhere; some witty, some profound, some thought-provoking, many, well, let's be honest, instantly forgettable.

So why has this one stayed with me?

Well, firstly, because it intrigued me. So often prayer is talked about in terms of what it promises; we might believe that prayer promises peace, joy, healing, and meaning. Some people, although I am not among them, believe that prayer promises more material rewards too. As someone who is privileged to live with the luxuries of a full fridge, a heated home and good, free schooling for my children, it seems obscene to me to see prayer primarily as a means of acquisition of yet more stuff when millions around the world live in squalour and poverty with no realistic way out.

I know this, and yet it is so easy to slip into the shopping list mentality when we pray. Maybe this is partly because as well as being surrounded by quotations, we are also surrounded by advertising which shows us, over and over again, what we haven't got. I bought a well-known women's fashion magazine this week (there was a free lip gloss on the cover) and, having not seen one of these magazines for a while, I had forgotten that the are, essentially, a brochure of consumer adverts with the occasional editorial (which was mostly about more stuff that you can buy). We live in a shopping list world. I was reading a friend's blog about Christmas and consumerism last night, and as I was reading, my daughter, who was sitting across the living room from me, texted me her new updated Christmas list; talk about timing! No wonder the temptation to approach prayer in terms in terms of what it can get us is so strong; it's how we live today.

Yet the heart of Christianity is relationship, a profound relationship between God and humans, made possible only by the God-human, Jesus. And I think I'd go so far as to say that the heart of life itself is relationship, relationships with ourselves, others, and ultimately, God. I was listening to the wonderful, much-covered Nat King Cole song Nature Boy the other day which puts it better than I could:

'This he said to me:"The greatest thingyou'll ever learnIs just to loveAnd be lovedIn return."'

You can't go into Sainsbury's and buy that; how pitifully empty the lives of those who substitute stuff for love can be.

So, back to prayer, which, as the quotation has it, promises nothing but the remaining with God. What does that even mean? Well, I take it to mean that prayer is all about entering into the mystery of relationship with the unseen but ever-present God who is himself love. Whatever else it might be, prayer is, at heart, relationship. It is the deepest expression of who we are, crying out to the Spirit who indwells us to fill us more, draw us deeper, show us more of this incredible reality that is the love for which we exist, asking for this love to overspill into our wounded, fractured world and to pour into that world the only thing that could ever bring true peace and healing; the presence of the Spirit of God himself. Or, to put it more concisely, an ancient prayer of the church: 'Come, Holy Spirit.'

What the coming of the Holy Spirit may mean is not ours to preempt. If we pray this truly, what we are doing is, effectively, ripping up the shopping list and standing with open hands to beckon God himself to come and fill our emptiness. It means knowing that stuff, even what we perceive to be spiritual stuff, is a poor substitute for the presence of God himself. It means recognising that the only ultimate answer to our deepest prayer is a richer, deeper revelation of the remaining with God. Which is exactly what prayer promises.

I'll probably blog more about Christmas as it draws near. But for now, suffice it to say Christmas can either be approached as a consumer-fest, a wishlist blowout, or as an invitation to enter more deeply into the incredible, unpriceable gift of God with us. Prayer is much the same.